


Missy

by I_am_Best



Series: The Adventures of River Song [1]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-29
Updated: 2015-07-13
Packaged: 2018-04-01 21:38:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4035469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/I_am_Best/pseuds/I_am_Best
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>River works on her degree, meets a very odd woman, and learns more about herself than she had planned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is now multi-chapter because I'm pretty sure most of River's run in the show was just a fever dream I had, and since she's not the Master I haven't looked at her EU stuff. So here are some adventures of her own.

The ship was large, freezing, and uncomfortably empty. Out beyond its walls and shields lay the void, so hot it froze or so cold it burned, edged with background chatter and silence. Lonely and yet full of life.

River thought that a very good description of the Doctor, too. She couldn't stop thinking about him, to her own frustration and others. Yet she couldn't help but to feed her obsession, surrounded as she was now by stories and artifacts (all replicas, of course, she knew a fake when she saw one) dedicated to him. Questions and hopefully answers, too, lay just beyond the doors in front of her, painted up blue with familiar panels River hasn't seen in lifetimes. Instead of the police box instructions, though, some very boring bulletins had been posted on it. The windows were darkened and a sign, "Museum Director" had been glued onto the tinted glass.

A metallic, artificial cough distracted her from star gazing at said doors. She stood and promptly dropped her folder, arms numb from sitting in one position for too long. The contents drifted on currents of recycled air. River and the android watched them float to the ground. She took a controlled breath to calm herself.

"The director will see you now," the android intoned in its flat, radio-static voice. It wasn't even an android proper, not really, but some ugly swansong to the boxy tin man robot of yore. River had heard the director was a bit of an odd duck. It almost made her wonder if the Doctor himself resided behind those doors. He was, after all, the oddest of ducks.

She had just barely gotten her papers back in her folder when the robot pushed a button and the doors swung open on silent hinges. River straightened, fixed her wild curls of hair, and steadied herself before she took that first step.

When she'd lost her purpose in life - or rather, changed it of her own accord, as it was all about perspective - River had also lost that confidence, that dangerous flipancy, that had come with it. She would have liked to have kept the latter, but was happy the former had gone. So here she stood, ready to craft her own rudder and regain her bearings.

Darkness lurked around the edges of the office, hiding all its empty space, so it felt more compact than it was. Whorls of smoke hung in the air like abstract art, and in the quiet she heard glass chime on metal. Resolutely, River approached.

This was the foremost authority on the Doctor, tucked away in a dusty old museum in an empty corner of the universe, one in a long line of fools who dedicated their life to him. And River was about to join those ranks.

"Sit," a voice, female, commanded. River sat. Instead of a view out into space, the director had a wall of the Doctor she was starting at. The eyes of one man, many faces, in a hundred photographs and looping video clips, stared back.

"You're here to learn about the Doctor." It was a statement, not a question. "Have you visited the museum? Maybe bought my book? It's quite good, or so I've heard."

"O-of course!" River said, hoping to cut off any notion that she hasn't done her research. Because she had, for longer than this woman could even guess. River wasn't just the audience to the Doctor's life, she was a part of his history herself. She would make herself a part of his future, too. "But I need to know more."

The director was silent. Then: "Oh. The one with the dissertation. That's right." She spoke with a quiet singsong tone, as though to herself. She hasn't even remembered who she was meeting with!

Deep breath. Be calm. "Are you going to help me or just promote your book?"

The director sighed and a plume of ghostly curls rose. "I suppose soooo. For the good of the greater academic community, of course."

River had to bite her tongue before she snapped some remark she'd later regret at the dismissive tone. The director was being very apathetic about a lifetime's work. Work she still hasn't torn her gaze from, though River glared intently at the back of her chair.

"Of course," she echoed.

At that, the director deigned to turn around and set her glass down, more empty than full of glinting amber liquid, next to a more empty than full decanter. Up until now, River knew next to nothing about her. She had been a secretive person with a consuming obsession and the money to fund it. No photos, no real name on her publications, only signed the Director in some mockery of the Doctor. She wasn't what River had expected. Small, thin, with sharp cheeks and eyes and a pile of dark hair with a hat clipped to it. Red lips to go with red nails.

A cigar with a ring of lipstick hung between those red nails. Smoke curled from her nostrils like dragon's breath. River thought she was trying too hard to look either quirky or dangerous. The fake fruit on her hat made it difficult to gauge. The Doctor once wore a celery, but that had been a real vegetable. This definitely wasn't the Doctor.

The director held out her hand. "We should start with introductions."

River took it. She was willing to do anything for the Doctor, even stand this woman.

"River Song, archaeology student."

"Missy, the Doctor's biggest fan."

They shook.


	2. Chapter 2

Though River felt it hadn't gone as well as it could have, the interview had turned into a job offer. Just a temporary one, mind, as River still had school which she'd only just begun that year. Thus River found herself about a fortnight later and still at the museum. She hadn't gone in expecting a job, but River could see the advantages in accepting. Figuring out how to deal with Missy was a steep learning curve, though, and the director offered very little leeway.

When River had initially arrived she'd been full of ideas and attitude; she was, after all, special in her knowledge of the Doctor. Missy's first order of business had been to point out how useless being special was in and of itself.

_'What experience do you have? Archaeology, time travel. Either? Neither? Anything?'_

_'Oh dear. Dear, dear, dear. Your timeline's a mess. Don't worry, we'll get you sorted out.'_

_'I've hidden all your spoilers, so don't go looking for them. Not that you're missing much.'_

_'It's a bit convenient, isn't it? Everything you say, these Silences and space suits and born to kill the Doctor (really? Special aren't you). Nobody remembers them, nobody can verify.'_

_'Where are you, Miss Song, if you're so important already? Where are you in our archives?'_

_'Nobody remembers you.'_

"I didn't even say anything this time. Why are you crying?"

Missy stood, exactly sixteen relative days - sixteen long, long days of sharp queries and brusque statements - after introducing herself to River with a hand on her hip and a clipboard in the other. River's clipboard lay beside River on the cool tile of the eleventh Doctor's aisle.

She was crying, trying so hard not to, because she was surrounded by the detritus of the Doctor's lives, and she wanted to crawl into one of those display cases and lock the door. Stay where she belonged, with an empty placard beside her and a journal with nothing in it, because she didn't exist to anyone but the Doctor. Because Missy was right about everything, and her constant reminders had finally worn River down. Amy and Rory, kind as they were (and she knew they were kind, as she had grown up beside them), couldn't look for her without him, and he hadn't looked.

The stories of the search for Melody Pond weren't tucked away in the eleventh Doctor's section, between the Impossible Girl and the Girl Who Waited. Missy wouldn't have known to hide that name, only River Song. So where was the girl who lived for him alone? That was her Doctor and he hadn't even looked for her. The future her was all that was spoken of, and Missy kept those files under lock and key, barely having to modify the displays to accomodate. River asked only one question about those times, begged Missy to answer.  _'Did he look for me?'_

And always, no. You found him. You always find him. She'd wished Missy had been kind and refuse to answer.

Why didn't he look for her?

So River found herself in Missy's arms on the floor of the Eleventh Doctor's room, with the director trying to get her to stop crying. Everything River tried to ignore came tumbling out unchecked and unfiltered, and despite her hyperfeminine fascade, Missy was not good at stereotypically womanly things like comfort or care for a child long abandoned.

Eventually she got River up and to a restroom, and then they spent a few days away from the museum, traveling to the nearest city-ship and prettying up the poor student at Missy's expense. River had at first assumed there was some jealousy in Missy's treatment of her, knowing who she would become to the Doctor. When push came to shove, however, she didn't shove, just tried in her awkward, unfamiliar way to make River feel better. They didn't talk about what happened, only what could happen now.

"The Doctor redefines himself all the time. Why don't you?" Another knife-edge question, but this time it wasn't to cut at River.

River thought back to who she was before. She hated to cry, so she'd be someone who didn't cry, didn't lose control like that. Confident, self-assured, even when defying conditioning several thousand years ago. When the high wore off, Melody had changed her name to match her body and forgot how to stand steady now that she was alone.

"You should matter to yourself first and foremost," Missy advised as she helped River into slinky dresses and bright heels, everything she'd been when she tried to kill the Doctor except the desire to kill him. River had liked feeling sexy and dangerous, like she had in that time Missy refused to believe existed.

Though Missy's allure, if indeed she had any, was buried under layers of old-fashioned skirts and glass decanters, she knew how to accessorize for the femme fatale. It was odd, because they looked about the same age (though Missy acted older and River felt much younger). Missy was basically playing dress-up with River as her doll.

Missy's idea of self was shallow, veering between two extremes with no middle ground. Nice or nasty, take your pick, but never nuanced. It was the same way she defined personalities, as though clothes and affectation was all that made a person. It got River a very nice wardrobe, but left some gaping holes for her to figure out on her own. Missy tried, at least.

For that, River liked her a little more, despite the fake fruit and cigar-smoke smell, despite the way she seemed to delight in cruel rhetorics. Armed with this new insight, she found the director more bearable, enough at least to stay out the remainder of her break.

* * *

"Do you not actually like the Doctor?" River ventured one day while helping the tin man and Missy move displays. Well, Missy was bossing them around and called that helping. River learned not to question her too much, or too often, or about certain things, so she'd been ruminating on this particular one for a while now.

The tin man android was moving one of the spare TARDISes into place after it and River had wheeled away the old one. It wasn't an oft visited location, this museum, but still someone had managed to fall into the display and break the poor thing's phonebox door. As a result they found themselves having to put the tenth Doctor's TARDIS in the fifth Doctor's area for now, but only Missy and River knew the difference.

What a sad, lonely monument to his greatness, and a headache to keep in order as River was discovering. But that was why she was really here, not just to learn about the Doctor, but to learn how to keep her timelines tidy, and Missy as it turned out, was great at that.

Missy picked apart stories, photos, reports, and any other fragments the Doctor left behind, figuring out who was who and when they lived or died. She numbered the Doctor's regenerations, for the sake of ease, placed scraps of information in each section. There were gaps of missing details, always would be, but the small stories made it through, the companions, the files from government agencies throughout time and space. River had heard Missy on call with the Time Agency, which explained some of it, but the rest was paperwork up to her elbows, a lot of string, push pins, and cups upon cups of tea.

River was on tea duty for two days before she demanded she be allowed to help Missy.

Things had smoothed out a lot since then, barring River's little breakdown and Missy's raincloud moodiness that came and went at random. Her reply now suggested it was one of her sunny days.

"No, not really," Missy said idly around the bobby pins in her mouth. "I don't like the Doctor." She was readjusting her hair in the bellied reflection of one of the Doctor's many, documented foes, while the others did the actual work.

"I mean," Missy corrected while River was still trying to figure out why an expert wouldn't even like the subject she studied. "I don't like him, but I love him, I suppose. In a way. I definitely hate him. I don't like him laughing at me. There's a lot of emotional baggage when it comes to the Doctor."

"Don't I know it," River muttered to herself as she clipped the partitions back into place. "That was very honest of you, Missy," she said louder.

"Why shouldn't I be honest, dear? You're here to learn about the Doctor, and what's more important to know than who he is to people?"

"I'm sorry, I don't follow."

"The Doctor isn't really a person, he's more an idea strung out across constellations, across time. Healer, warrior, madman or idiot in a box - nice little breadcrumbs to follow, but they have no substance. It's us, those he leaves behind, those who aren't mentioned, who give him any value."

It was oddly poignant, more than River expected Missy could be. This was a different stance than Missy's constant need for evidence. Friend or foe or simply collateral damage, so many people in the Doctor's lives weren't documented and catalogued. It caught her off guard to hear Missy acknowledge them, too. Then she realized - Missy included herself in that group. That was a question, who Missy was to the Doctor, that River knew she wouldn't answer.

"Hey, boxbot," Missy said suddenly with a snap of her fingers, attention turned to her outdated android. "What's the Doctor to you?"

It stilled and sighed its mechanical sighs, processing the question. "I am the curator of this museum. He is the sole reason I exist."

Missy frowned, hand limp at the wrist, a few bobby pins held loosely in her grip. "Hm. Of course he is. You see that? That's what the Doctor is to some people - far too many people for my liking. Don't be a boxbot, River. Nobody likes boxbot."

River had stopped listening before Missy even spoke. "That's the curator? I thought you were."

Missy laughed like glass shattering, sharp and sudden. "Hah - no. I'm the director, dear. It says so on my door. I direct people, including our dear curator. Who also happens to be my receptionist, the custodian, and other minor jobs I don't like doing. Which are most of them. When I'm not here, it's in charge."

"It. Does it have a name?"

Missy shrugged.

"Do you have a name?" she asked the curator instead.

"I am the curator."

River chewed her lip thoughtfully as Missy strode off, enough mischief stirred for now. The curator just stood there, looking as sad and ignored as the museum. "Are you... aware?"

"I am aware."

She dropped the partition rope she was still holding. "I didn't realize - I -" River cut herself off. She had just thought, what with how Missy treated it, that it wasn't anything more than a robot. Preprogrammed, following patterns and orders, non-sentient. Her unspoken apology hung awkwardly between them.

River knelt and picked up the rope again, clipping the last one in place. "Why do you let her treat you like that?"

"It makes her happy to. It does not bother me."

"It bothers me. It bothers me a lot, actually." Missy knew, and she let River draw the wrong conclusions, speak down to another living being like it was less than herself. Never once did she try and correct her. River didn't want to be the sort to tread on others like that. She didn't like that Missy was, but wasn't surprised.

"Thank you. But please do not do anything rash. It does not bother me," the curator repeated.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I now have a lovely beta, Spitfire47, to help with the chapter content. They've looked over the first two as well as this one (and I've added a good solid chunk more to chapter 2, just clarifying things, as a result) and are being wonderfully helpful with the story thusfar.

 

River tried really, very hard to not bring it up to Missy, going so far as to spend most of her free time with the curator and always busy, so Missy couldn't pounce like a cat and play with her some more. The curator was genuinely was a mellow, calm person, and River found talking with it worked as a port in the stormy ocean that was her employment under Missy. The curator wasn't built by her, but by the owner (another mistake River had made. She didn't realize the owner wasn't Missy, either) of the museum.

When she asked after the owner, the curator had described him as nice, if a bit... simple. Smart enough to build a robot out of scraps, smart enough to make himself rich as sin, but in every other way, simple.

Tim was his name. He enjoyed the Doctor's life like one enjoyed a show or a book series, and had the funds to afford his fannish endeavor. The curator admitted, in one of the times Missy had vanished for days doing whatever she did on her own, that it tried to model itself after Tim. River found it sweet, though Missy probably found it saccharine, if the curator hid that detail from her.

Tim only ever came by during the infrequent, unadvertised symposiums on the Doctor held at that very ship, and River checked to see when the next symposium was scheduled. Not for a year, and the speakers were paltry. Missy was there, as were a few other obscure names that River only vaguely recognized. She imagined the audience was paltry, too. But every last one of them dedicated. River wished she'd known about the symposiums sooner, so she wouldn't have accidentally subjected herself to Missy one-on-one.

Her time with Missy was mostly spent listening to her stories (all of which, River noticed, had an air of falsification to them yet seemed based in truth - a curious juxtaposition) and being ordered to do this, or do that. River realized quickly that the way to learn with her wasn't to ask questions, because she'd invariably get sarcastic non-answers, but to observe. Watch as Missy worked and figure out for herself why she did what she did, follow the connections Missy saw. River had a time sense about her that helped, but Missy's methodology was so far beyond comprehension, River felt she deserved some praise for even following it. The connections she drew, the tangles in timelines she untangled, were impressive in how efficiently the woman worked.

River almost wondered if she was, like the Doctor, a Time Lord. So she began to draw up lists Missy would be proud of. Physical attributes of Time Lords and Gallifreyans, mental attributes, personality and social ones. What made a Time Lord, and how many boxes could River tick for Missy?

When River was called into her office over the telecom system, on a day she felt was like any other, she hadn't been expecting to be kicked out. She had only just begun her investigation!

"What!"

"I'm kicking you out, poppet. It's January - time for you to go back to school."

River sighed, felt every muscle relax. Missy hadn't caught on to her scheming, rather she'd just met the end of her tenure here. It was so hard to track Earth days when relative days were just numbers with neither sun nor moon to notice their passing. "I hadn't even noticed."

"It's a good thing one of us pays attention. Well, off you go. Pack up. I'll send a message to the shuttle to stop skipping my damn museum on its route. Have fun at school. Good-bye, Miss Song."

There wasn't any mention of River returning, and her heart hurt a little at that. Missy and she were the same in many ways, some of which River was sure to work out of herself, and this felt like a rejection. She didn't bring it up, though, because Missy had already forgotten she was there.

She hunted down the curator, who gave her the more desired reaction. Sadness, fondness, a desire to keep in contact, even though none of it was present in its tone or unemotive face. When the curator said it was sad to see her go, and enjoyed her company, River accepted it as truth. The curator made sure she still had the museum's call information before seeing her off on the shuttle back to the nearest subspace port with a jerky, mechanical wave.

Missy didn't even bother to show up.

* * *

River sat at a very stark table with only a graphics screen flickering in front of her, skimming through research for unrelated assignments. Unlike the museum, Luna University was essentially digital space housed in minimalist buildings on the moon. No papers, no dark smoky corners and interesting factoids tucked away. It felt all the colder for it.

River almost missed the museum, walking its usually empty halls with the curator, theorizing about the Doctor and learning how to cook from it. She didn't know why the curator enjoyed cooking, since it didn't eat, but was endlessly appreciative of its hobby when one day it had been up to Missy to provide for them. She could make tea and sweets and that was about it before the food became biohazards. Then she would skulk while muttering about ' _it's just a list of instructions. I can follow instructions, so the instructions must be wrong. I could cook last go.'_

It was a relief, however, to be back among normal people – people who didn't cut at her with verbal knives then turn around and buy her lunch. She still hadn't figured out how to approach Missy about the curator, but time wasn't out yet. Even if Missy hadn't broached the subject, River had convinced herself she could wheedle her way back into a job there. While at first, River entertained the notion of not returning, as the curator had specifically asked her to not interfere so she didn't have to get involved, she couldn't just abandon the greatest repository of information on the Doctor this side of the year 5000.

Her fellow students and teachers had noticed some changes about River, changes she hadn't been aware of until one day her Comparative Laboratory Techniques in Archaeology and Xenoarchaeology professor pulled her aside to comment on how she was doing some very interesting things with her own research. Interesting usually meant bad in academic lingo, but he quickly clarified that, while a little uncouth, it worked wonderfully for her specific focus. String and pushpins, how antique, how clever. River enjoyed being clever and a little uncouth, and almost felt bad that she didn't credit Missy for the idea. But that woman lived out in the middle of nowhere, studied as obscure a subject as one could study without it being Shakespeare, hid behind silly pseudonyms. She wanted her privacy, so River wasn't going to breach that.

It had been very hard to find any surfaces that would take a pushpin (and it had to be a pushpin, it felt sacrilege using anything else), and string was all but impossible to get extra of. Once she ran out for one project, she had to record the data, then cannibalize it for the next. But it really did help, and where River had struggled through school in most regards, she began to advance. A life of being raised to kill the Doctor, abandoned, and left on her own didn't allow for things like friends or good study habits. She'd almost gotten the friends bit down with Amy and Rory (admittedly a friendship built on lies), but never good study habits.

Then, months into the normalcy of school, River called up the museum. Missy answered.

"Hello, poppet," she said as though they had spoken only yesterday. Today she had on pink lipstick and eye shadow that would be garish on any paler a face.

"Hi, um -"

"Are you going to be back during your break?" Missy interrupted. "Because I've been so busy editing that I've developed quite the backlog of files that need processing."

"Yeah – I think. Maybe. Sure. I'll be back," River said, stumbling over the sudden need to actually make the choice. Missy's lips quirked up into a quick smile. "Actually, can you put the curator on?"

The smile fell away. "Why?"

"Because we're friends, and I just wanted to catch up with it."

Missy didn't move, actively seemed to be puzzling over the idea of being friends with the curator. River steeled herself. This hadn't been how she wanted to have this discussion, but if Missy was going to give her that look every time she tried to interact with the android, now was better than later.

"I know you don't like the curator, and I don't know why, but it's still a person. You should treat it like one."

"No."

That deflated some of River's ire, mostly due to confusion. That... that wasn't even an argument, or a defense, any attempt at justification. Just no. "What?"

"No. I shall treat my robot however I like." She didn't even sound offended by River's demand, but rather was just stating a universal truth. They stared at each other challengingly, but River already knew she lost this round.

Suddenly Missy stood, filling the camera with a starscape of deep blue skirt and glass beads. She was talking to someone – the curator – and stepped aside for it to sit down in front of the camera instead.

River blushed as though caught doing something bad. It had asked her not to do anything rash, and, well, here she was, having done something rash. She just hoped that Missy was fickle enough to not do anything about it.

"Hello, River Song." If it had heard, the curator didn't say anything about it.

"Hello, curator. How have you been?"

"I have been well. The director and I have discovered what we believe to be a new regeneration of the Doctor. It is very exciting." Even after knowing it better, River found it deceptive how easily the curator came across as just another tool to be used and not a person. No inflections, no nuances to its vocabulary. If it said this was exciting, though, she'd have to take its word for it.

"It sounds like it."

"Will you be returning to assist."

"Yeah, I can't let you have all the fun," River said with a wink. She was much more sure of her answer here.

"Now that that's settled," Missy said from somewhere off-screen, "Tell her to shoo. We've got work to do."

"The director would like me to tell you to shoo," the curator faithfully conveyed.

"I'm shooing. Goodbye, curator."

"What about me?" Missy leaned over from the side, pale eyes big and innocent. "No goodbye for me?"

"No."

The connection being closed cut off Missy's cackle. Really, nothing fazed that woman.

* * *

The upswing in her performance was noted several times over before the year was out, and as time passed the reality of living with Missy faded to a more manageable memory. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad. Every other time she called, she'd gotten the curator instead of Missy, due, the android hinted as well it could, in part to Missy herself.

That, too, bode well for River's return.

There were a handful of other people on the trip this time, some tourists who found it adorably kitschy that such a specialized museum existed, as though it were dedicated to yarn or sporks and not to the man who saved the universe time and time again. She listened in to pass the time.

"It's a bit narcissistic, isn't it?"

River perked up. That voice, unamused, a little nasally –

"Nooo. No, nah. I was looking at the brochure, and this place has stuff from when I met tribbles and fought daffodils instead of Weeping Angels. You'll like it, trust me. Shouldn't even exist, though, which means it's not narcissism, it's investigation."

Fast, frantic, she could imagine his hands flying for no reason at all as he spoke. River sank down lower in her seat, eyes flicking up to see the reflections in the glass of the window. They were just behind her.

"Tribbles are from  _Star Trek_."

"And where do you think they got the idea, Rory?"

River covered her mouth as though they could hear her very breath, hoping to vanish into the seat cushions. She wasn't ready to meet the Doctor yet, but what if this was her first meeting, anyway? What if she was messing with the proper order of things by sneaking off to the bathroom and waiting until the shuttle was about to depart to dart out and into the employee only areas? That was what she did, regardless. She wasn't ready to met him, yet.

She hit Missy full-on, hard enough to knock them both over.

"What on Gallifrey's gotten into you?" Missy demanded as she pushed River off of her.

"The Doctor's here!"

Missy stopped trying to get her skirts back in order. "What?"

"He – he's here, with my parents - with Amy and Rory."

"You must be very excited," Missy intoned. She resumed getting back to her feet.

"No, you don't understand. I can't meet him like this."

"Why not? He'd like you whatever way you met him." Her voice was still curiously flat, and River realized that, whatever she had thought before about Missy being jealous, this was actually the tone she should have been listening for. If she had time, she would have loved to figure out why that was her complaint, but now there were more important matters to attend to.

"I don't care what he wants, or would like. I care about how I want to meet him."

Missy's mouth twitched into a phantom of a smile at the echo of her advice. "Oh, all right then. Would you like me to send the curator to meet him, instead? The floppy-haired one without eyebrows, right? That's your Doctor?"

"You aren't going to meet him, yourself?"

"Of course not, my dear. I have my reasons much as you, but he needs an audience, and if he doesn't get one he'll probably go wandering for one. Then what'll we do when he's in places he ought not to be, hm?" Missy held up her communicator bracelet and called the curator. "It appears we have some very special guests today. Please make sure they're greeted accordingly. Offer the full tour, free of charge."

"Yes, director."

Missy pulled River to her office, a place she'd forgotten had an air of the dragon's lair to it. It was as stark as ever, though the photo of a man (River assumed the Doctor, though she had never seen this one before) sat front and center on her desk. Pushpins were jammed into his eyes and lined up in the facsimile of a smile along a very severe frown.

River wisely didn't comment as Missy pried it up, a few pins rolling away from the gruesome smile, and shoved it into a drawer. She then motioned for River to sit and waved away the photos and information that still floated about on her wall, clearing some space for a live feed of the museum itself.

There he was.


End file.
